How do i route?

>my osx is a fresh install and never plugged in any passwords. is there a default password for this?

By default the root account should be disabled (unless you're running Mac OS X Server).

>i tried the sudo prefix and got:
route: bad address: mask </pre>
The fact you didn't get a sudo permissions error means that you have the ability to run commands via sudo - that's a good thing, you're in the admin group.

The error message is coming from route saying that it didn't understand the parameters you passed it. You'd need to know specific information about the route you're trying to add in order to solve that one. I just made up some numbers in my example.

You need to be an administrator on your machine in order to edit the routing table. The IT guy you worked with switched to root which allowed him to do this. If you don't know the root password (and he won't tell you) then you can't take that path.

However, if your account is in the admin group then you can use sudo to temporarily elevate your privileges to run specific commands. It's worth a try, no matter what - just precede the command you want to run with sudo:

<pre class=command>sudo route add -net 1.2.3 10.9.8.7</pre>

You'll be prompted for your password - which is your password on this machine (to make sure it's really you and not just someone using your system). If all goes well it'll work, otherwise you'll get a 'not authorized' error message, in which case its back to the IT guy for help.